Only a small part of scientific progress has resulted from planned search for specific objectives. A much more important part has been made possible…

- Irving Langmuir

Happy indeed is the scientist who not only has the pleasures which I have enumerated, but who also wins the recognition of fellow scientists and of t…

- Irving Langmuir

The scientist is motivated primarily by curiosity and a desire for truth.

- Irving Langmuir

A chemist who does not know mathematics is seriously handicapped.

- Irving Langmuir

Train yourselves. Don't wait to be fed knowledge out of a book. Get out and seek it. Make explorations. Do your own research work. Train your hands a…

- Irving Langmuir

[There] are cases where there is no dishonesty involved but where people are tricked into false results by a lack of understanding about what human b…

- Irving Langmuir

And literature frequently rises to heights that make it international.

- Irving Langmuir

Many of the things that have happened in the laboratory have happened in ways it would have been impossible to foresee, but not impossible to plan fo…

- Irving Langmuir

History proves abundantly that pure science, undertaken without regard to applications to human needs, is usually ultimately of direct benefit to man…

- Irving Langmuir